A leading climate change scientist at NASA is urging the United Kingdom to cease building coal-fired power plants, and is calling for a worldwide tax on all carbon emissions, to tackle the climate change fight head-on.

Far from being a pipe dream years away from reality, practical technology for capturing carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas — from smokestacks is aiming for deployment at coal-fired electric power generating stations and other sources, scientists said here today.

A group of researchers at MIT, led by Ruben Juanes, published a study this week that showed deep saline aquifers in the United States are capable of storing a century’s worth of carbon dioxide produced by the nation’s coal or gas fueled power plants.